The sound of a heartbeat

Eternally in your debt

When a relationship is new, everything feels great. Beautiful. Perfect, some people might say.
Reality is far away from being perfect.
Life is full of ups and downs, can be so grime and raw sometimes that people just stop believing they are worth being loved.

Emilia and Pietro's love blossomed quickly, and they found solace in each other's arms.
They were both running from their pasts, but with each other, they found a sense of peace and belonging. However, as their love grew stronger, so did the fear of their past catching up to them. They both had secrets that they were trying to hide, afraid that they would lose each other if the truth came out.

"Why don't you care!" Pietro said erratically while stepping in the studio.
Emilia didn't have the time to guess what he was referring to. She closed her agenda and just kept watching her seemingly flawless boyfriend revealing his first flaw, or so she thought.
"I don't care who's coming to the launch but this is your only opportunity, if you don't stop spending so much money we will not be able to pay rent for this studio."
Emilia was not following, she didn't understand why he was talking about their finances in that way.

"I think this is a close door conversation" she said while adjusting her skirt and walking through her office, shutting the door.
"What are you taking about? The last money i spent is for paying catering."
"Then there's some big shit happening, I have gotten a notification from the bank asking approval to wire three hundred thousand euros for a deposit on a property purchase"
She misjudged the situation, trying not to panic she brought herself and Pietro to the nearest police station.

Identify theft. Cloned credit card and all that in worst, yet perfect moment.
Emilia was trying to place a new product in the market, she applied for it to get patented and everything. She was planning a launch dinner for the approval of this product being used by armed forces for security operations.
Coming up with the necessary funds for her lawyers wasn't a problem, it cause a month delay for the launch dinner; Vittorio from the law firm took care of everything.

Astounded by one small detail Emilia wanted to see Vittorio alone, you see.. her past is full of memories, some of them are genuine and joyful but there's a veil of raw emotions and reality thaw was thrown upon her.
She received so many lies, she forgot for a second her boyfriend was still seemingly perfect... so she asked him to meet their lawyer together.
"You see this? There's a regular payment every two months. It's a too big sum of money to just be going towards savings" Emilia pointed out.
She asked Pietro about this regular, yet irregular payment.